Photo by Felix J. Koch
TURKISH WOMEN AT SALONICA: TURKEY
of the Romans, who were the first civil
ized people with whom they had come in
contact, and Greek influence survived on
the coast alone. During the early days
of the eastern Roman Empire, with its
mixed Greco-Latin civilization, the two
languages continued to coexist, as well
as some of the local dialects.
THE BULGARIANS ARE SLAVICIZED FINNS
The first barbarians to settle perma
nently in the Balkan Peninsula coming
from the northeast were the Bulgars, a
Finnish people whose home was the mid
dle Volga districts; they now occupied
the southern banks of the Danube. The
Slavs are said to have begun to pour into
this region as early as the third century,
but they were not established until after
the Bulgarian invasion.
Their position in the east of Europe
bears certain analogies to that of the
Teutons in the west. They soon amal
gamated with the Bulgars and gave them
their language; the result of this union
is the modern Bulgarian people, who may
be described as Slavicized Finns.
No traces of the original Bulgars re
main, although some of the Macedonians
have Finnish features, and the Bul
garians of today speak a purely Slavonic
language. The Slavs and Bulgarians
drove other races of the interior before
them, and Slavonic displaced all the
others, save the Latin spoken by isolated
settlements of Vlachs who retired into
the mountains, and the dialect of the
Illyrians, who were confined in the west
region known as Albania.
Thus, as early as the ninth century we
have in Macedonia most of the elements
which now make up the population of
that country-Greeks on the coast and
in the large towns; Slavs in the interior:
Illyrians or Albanians in the west, and
isolated settlements of Latinized Thra
cians or Vlachs in the mountains; the
Slavs themselves soon divide into two
groups-the Slavicized Bulgars and the
Serbs.
These various elements were partly
under the dominion of the Eastern Em
pire, which was not, however, strong
enough to Hellenize them, and partly
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